Peace for our time

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed on July 14 brings the United States and other world powers together in an effort to “stop the spread of nuclear weapons,” according to President Barack Obama. We will see, in a few years, whether this deal delivers on its promise. What we do know is that this deal will allow Iran to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles that have the capability to deploy nuclear warheads and will rapidly accelerate the spread of conventional weaponry all around the Middle East.

The United Nations’ arms embargo on Iran will be lifted in five years – or earlier, if the International Atomic Energy Agency determines that Iran is not working on building a nuclear weapon. In eight years, Iran will be able to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles. In April, just a few months ago, the administration released a fact sheet about the negotiations that stated that a “United Nations Security Council resolution [on a final agreement]…would incorporate ‘important restrictions on conventional arms and ballistic missiles.’”

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on July 7, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said firmly that world powers should not relieve pressure on Iran when it comes to arms trafficking and ballistic missiles. At that same hearing, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said “we want them to continue to be isolated as a military and limited in terms of the kind of equipment and material they’re able to [have].”

In the final hours of the night on July 13, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, had agreed to the bulk of the provisions in the agreement. It was then, at the last minute, that he chose to grandstand on a timeline for opening a door to arms and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). There are two ways to understand what happened next. The first is that Iran finally yielded its zero-year demand for access to arms and ICBMs because the future of its nuclear program was on the table. The second is that we yielded our basic commitment to pressure because it stood in the way of “winning” a historic, hard-fought deal. The provisions we have today go against our officials’ own opinions on which they have now turned in, presumably, an effort to present a united front with the White House and State Department—for the benefit, now, of Iran.

The President’s “deal or war” is, as described by Charles Krauthammer, a false-choice statement. Not only is it a false choice, but it also does not account for the increased instability and conflict in the region that will result from this deal. In our hurry to avoid war, we have set the Middle East on that very path while diminishing our role and influence in the region and bolstering Iran’s. It is clear that the already emerging arms race—we have already drafted $6 billion worth of deals to supply military equipment to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Israel—could be the spark that lights the match for all-out war in the Middle East.

More painfully fundamental to this inevitability is the deal’s path to a massive cash inflow for Iran. Iran is “helping” the U.S. fight a common enemy—the Islamic State—and it is argued that at least some of the more than $100 billion in frozen assets will go toward just that. Again, though, at what cost? The United States’ influence in the region will become overshadowed by a newly empowered regional puppeteer that will use the new funds to fight the Islamic State and support its proxies – Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and, of course, our good friend Bashar-al-Assad. This can and will happen immediately, and it is only anyone’s guess how much more interesting the Middle East’s dynamic could become with the addition of Iran’s rise as an arms dealer.

More dangerous to the U.S. is Iran’s ability to build an ICBM, as sanctioned, basically, by the deal. Senator Marco Rubio’s assertion that Iran could develop, in less than a decade, long-range rockets that can reach the East Coast of the United States is not without merit. Experts cite Iran’s nascent space program, run by the military, as providing a helping hand to missile proliferation, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Anthony Cordesman saying that the minimum timeframe for an ICBM is now between four and 10 years. Combined with nuclear warheads, the danger posed by an ICBM is obviously catastrophic.

Iran has been, and still is, an aggressor state fighting proxy wars today – and potentially fighting total wars tomorrow. With this deal as a whole, and especially with the five and eight-year provisions for conventional arms and ICBMs, we aid Iran’s power politics and set the stage for its rise as a mighty nation-state and regional hegemon to our own detriment.